The Crunch

Number crunching has always been a hobby of mine. For a few months our Klout score has been stuck at 55. Being a numbers person, I’d like to see it increase. It doesn't seem to matter how often I post, how much I interact, how much my content gets shared – stuck fast at 55.

To clarify, our Twitter strategy has never been about quantity but rather quality. I've worked hard to improve the quality but that darn Klout score won’t budge. It really bugs me! It seems the only way I can increase it is to up the number of followers. While our followers are constantly growing, apparently not by enough to change that Klout score.

I can’t keep up with the 900 people I’m already following. I’m able to interact with only a small percentage of them. Maybe I feel that following someone is more of a commitment than it really is? I've been fighting the temptation to turn Twitter into a numbers game.

While I’m a numbers person, I realize there’s an inherent danger in fixating on one number. Often we can increase one number but must sacrifice something else in return. For example, an easy way to increase your order fulfillment metric is to increase your inventory, but that will have dire consequences in other areas, like cash flow.

In this case, our Klout score is butting up against my philosophy to keep social media ‘social’ and not turn it into a numbers game. Numbers are great – it’s what we do in reaction to them that has the impact. A strategy to increase or decrease any measurement needs to be considered thoroughly.

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originally published in Work Better, Not Harder on June 27, 2012